Serving Our Community
As a Community Pharmacy Group, we take care of the ongoing health of our many different communities and cultures. We are particularly proud and grateful of our relationship with the Indigenous communities we serve. Our involvement covers remoter communities like Hope Vale, Wujal Wujal, Lockhart, Coen, Laura, Cooktown, and Yarrabah. We believe maintaining these connections to remote communities through medicine and health services is important and has opened up many opportunities to absorb their culture.
To mark our pharmacy commitment to the Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander culture, our Pharmacist in Cooktown, Ruth Nona Renshaw, worked alongside artist Conrad Michael to produce a traditional artwork which represented traditional medicines and health within the Indigenous community in Cooktown.
We are honoured to have commissioned this beautiful artwork to be a part of the Alive Pharmacy Warehouse brand family.
About the Artist
Born: Cooktown
Clan Group: Balngarrwarra
Language: Guugu Yimithirr
Conrad is a Balngarrwarra Bama from Normanby River, north-west of Cooktown. His meticulous paintings and artifacts are inspired by the traditional stories from his country. In his younger days Conrad was a stockman but turned to painting after collaborating with his wife and artist Helen Gordon during a holiday. Conrad realised that he had talent and from then on continued to paint.
Helen and Conrad have exhibited their work in a range of exhibitions and won awards in the Cooktown area.
Reproduced with permission from the artist.
Conrad Michael (1958 - 2019)
Untitled, 2018
This painting was commissioned by Ruth Nona on behalf of Alive Pharmacy to acknowledge the importance of bush medicine to the Indigenous peoples of Cooktown. The liver of the black stingray would be eaten to lower cholesterol, the yellow noni fruit used for treating diabetes and the ckuki apple leaves made into a poultice to treat scabies. The blue lines in the centre of the painting represent the wind that blows through Cooktown.